Ludovic Trarieux

Ludovic Trarieux

Ludovic Trarieux (born November 30, 1840 in Aubeterre-sur-Dronne , † March 13, 1904 in Paris ) was a French politician and founder of the French League for Human Rights .

Life

Ludovic Trarieux studied law and initially worked as a lawyer. He was elected President of the Bordeaux Bar in 1877. From January 26th to November 1st, 1895 he was Minister of Justice of the Third French Republic . Trarieux played a supporting role in the Dreyfus affair . He pointed out to Auguste Scheurer-Kestner , the Vice President of the French Senate, who, after a conversation with Mathieu Dreyfus, became interested in the case of Alfred Dreyfus , who had been convicted as a traitor , of inconsistencies in the court martial . Scheurer-Kestner came to the conclusion in the course of 1897 that Dreyfus had been wrongly convicted. On December 7, 1897, Scheurer-Kestner gave a speech to the Senate , explaining why Dreyfusen's conviction was a miscarriage of justice . Trarieux was the only senator who supported Scheurer-Kestner's arguments. He pointed out that it should not be regarded as an attack on the army if a request for rectification was submitted after serious errors were made. Félix Jules Méline, on the other hand, also stressed before the Senate that there was no Dreyfus affair.

Under the impression of the Dreyfus affair , Trarieux founded the League for Human Rights, of which he was the first president. He held this office until 1903. The Dreyfus affair initially ended in a second conviction of Alfred Dreyfus in a second court martial in 1899. He was pardoned shortly afterwards. Trarieux campaigned for the rehabilitation of Dreyfus until his death. This did not take place until 1906, two years after Trarieux's death.

The International Ludovic-Trarieux Human Rights Prize is named after Trarieux .

literature

• Maurice Barrès : Scènes et doctrines du nationalisme . Éditions du Trident, Paris 1987, ISBN 2-87690-040-8 .
• Louis Begley : The Dreyfus Case: Devil's Island, Guantánamo, History's Nightmare. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 2009, ISBN 978-3-518-42062-1 .
• Léon Blum : Summoning the Shadows. The Dreyfus Affair. From the French with an introduction and a note by Joachim Kalka. Berenberg, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-937834-07-9 .
• Jean-Denis Bredin: The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus. George Braziller, New York 1986, ISBN 0-8076-1109-3 .
• Ruth Harris: The Man on Devil's Island - Alfred Dreyfus and the Affair that divided France. Penguin Books, London 2011, ISBN 978-0-141-01477-7 .
• Martin P. Johnson: The Dreyfus Affair - Honor and Politics in the Belle Époque . Macmillan Press Ltd, Houndmills 1999, ISBN 0-333-68267-X .
• George Whyte : The Dreyfus Affair. The power of prejudice. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-631-60218-8 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Whyte, p. 168